Antibacterial cleansing products have many potential uses for simultaneous cleaning and disinfecting a wide variety of materials, objects, living organisms, and the like. The current invention is concerned primarily with antibacterial cleansing products used as surgical scrubs to clean and disinfect items including the hands and arms of operating room personnel prior to the performance of surgical procedures and the skin surface of patients relevant to such procedures.
Bisbiguanide bactericidal substances, exemplified by chlorhexidine, are well known antibacterial agents; chlorhexidine is currently used in commercial surgical scrub products. It is a desirable antibacterial agent for such products because it has a broad spectrum of activity combined with good toxicity and mildness characteristics. Also, chlorhexidine is substantive to the skin and thus provides a persistant antibacterial action. However, chlorhexidine's antibacterial activity is greatly reduced in the presence of many surfactants. It has generally been found that anionic surfactants substantially reduce the antibacterial activity of chlorhexidine and that cationic surfactants are too irritating to be used in surgical scrub products. It has also been found that many nonionic surfactants substantially reduce the antibacterial activity of chlorhexidine. U.S. Pat. No. 2,830,006 issued to Birtwell & Rose on Apr. 8, 1958, discloses that bisbiguanide bactericidal substances are advantageously combined with certain nonionic surfactants to form products having valuable fungicidal, bactericidal and detergent properties. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,855,140 and 3,960,745 both issued to Billany, Longworth & Shatwell on Dec. 17, 1974, and June 1, 1976, respectively, disclose particular nonionic detergents with which chlorhexidine retains a substantial amount of antibacterial activity.